


The Carnival of Giants

by franglemand



Category: Elenium/Tamuli Series - David & Leigh Eddings
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:57:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franglemand/pseuds/franglemand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Strange goings-on around the annual Matherion carnival prompt Sarabian to ask for help from his Elene friends. Sparhawk and Vanion's investigations find magic in unexpexted places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Carnival of Giants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AwayLaughing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwayLaughing/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!

Dampness hung in the air, drops of mist obscuring and scattering the reflections of the sunset that showed fire-domed Matherion off to its best advantage. The usually busy streets around the warehouses by the river were quiet, even the sound of the river seemingly hushed by the rare display of dull skies in the middle of a warm Tamul spring.

 

Sparhawk approached the farthest warehouse with swift steps, irritably shaking the excess of water from his cloak as he opened the door.

 

“You’re late, Sparhawk. I’ve been waiting for you for ages.”

 

“Sorry, Vanion. We got caught up at the palace. Sarabian insisted on giving us a formal welcome as soon as we arrived so I couldn’t get away.”

 

Vanion grunted. “You could have sent word. I’d have stayed in town with Sephrenia – it’s truly miserable around here.”

 

“Have you found anything out yet?”

 

“No, I was waiting for you to have a look around. I did speak to one of the workers before he left for the night though. He’s convinced the whole thing is a hoax, just some idiots trying to whip up some excitement around the old stories before the parade a week on Saturday. Did you see Itagne at the palace by any chance? He’s been up at the university the past few days but I thought he might have come down with you.”

 

“No, according to Oscagne he’ll be around tomorrow though so hopefully he’ll be able to shed some light on what’s been happening.”

 

Sparhawk folded his cloak and put it on a barrel at the side of the door before wandering across to what appeared to be a closed-in horse’s stall with a small window in the door to allow a horse to see out. “The figures are in here, I suppose? May as well see what it is that’s got Matherion all worked up.”

 

Sparhawk drew back the bolt and opened the door. The two men silently looked through the doorway.

 

“What a charming tableau,” Vanion muttered dryly.

 

Inside the stall were four gigantic figures, ranging from 9ft to maybe 15ft tall. The smallest of the figures was apparently built to resemble a dog (albeit a dog dressed in a traditional Tamul kirtle and sitting up on its hind legs); the other three were presumably a family consisting of husband, wife and child. All had huge heads made of wood with painted on faces and old fashioned, green clothing covered bodies made of wicker. The effect in the fading light was more ominous than carnivalesque.

 

Sparhawk approached the figures cautiously, muttering a spell under his breath as he did so. He released the spell with a small gesture and waited for a response. “I can’t feel any traces of magic about them right now, Vanion. Are you picking anything up?”

 

“No,” his friend admitted. “Nothing at all. I’m still not convinced there’s anything here to find quite frankly. Who would bother animating these when people could just do the damage themselves and then claim the ‘giants’ did it? It’s a lot of magic to expend when they can get the same effect from just pretending.”

 

Sparhawk snorted. “You’ve grown cynical, my old friend. “

 

“Not cynical, just realistic. Why bother with magic when you can get publicity just from the rumours? This is Matherion, not Sarsos. I’m more inclined to look for chicanery and sabotage than magic, unless Itagne can give us something a little more concrete than someone’s sister’s husband’s dog’s cousin saw a ‘giant’ ripping another ‘giant’s’ shirt.”

 

“You may have a point there,” Sparhawk admitted. “Still, we’d better have a look around so we’ve at least got something to report back to Sarabian.”

 

The two men walked back out of the stall and Sparhawk carefully bolted it behind them, while Vanion drew back the door to the main room of the warehouse.

 

Scattered around the room were dozens of figures, some in small groups very like the one found in the smaller room while others appeared to stand alone. An obviously female giant in Valesian national costume rubbed shoulders with a male giant modelled on an old-fashioned Tamul policeman. Nearby a golden dragon head lay sideways on the floor next to a pile of cloth and sticks that would presumably form its body once lifted. In another corner of the room a dark-skinned mermaid with curly hair turning into swirling patterns on her tail faced the opposite direction to a group of figures dressed as pirates. Soldiers on the far side of the room were equipped with 3 metre wide shields, each bearing the motif of one of the old families of Tamuli.

 

Walking through the gigantic figures, Sparkhawk become gradually aware of a faint static at the edge of his consciousness. Concentrating hard, he nearly missed Vanion’s bitten off exclamation. He whirled around to see his friend staring hard at a particular giant with a handlebar moustache and a golden robe, presumably intended to mimic the robes worn by Tamul novice priests.

 

“Vanion?”

 

“Watch out, Sparhawk. There’s something happening here. I’m fairly sure that giant’s arm just moved.”

 

Vanion stepped closer to the figure, his cloak briefly catching on a pile of material to his left and revealing the decidedly Styric robe he wore underneath. This time there was no mistaking the movement as golden sparks briefly sputtered out the end of the “priest’s” finger, before Vanion stepped away and his cloak fell back into place. Sparhawk, jumping back in surprise, knocked into a wicker basket 3 metres high and woven into the shape of soldier’s horse. The horse rocked briefly, casting weird shadows over the two men and both men held their breath as it slowly settled back into place.

 

“Well-“ Vanion began, before Sparhawk caught a movement round to his left and turned sharply to see two figures dressed in historical costume, one in red robes with a stubby golden hat, the other dressed all in blue, start to move towards each other, their wooden bodies scraping eerily along the stone floor to the place where the tail of the wicker horse had previously stood. Sparhawk stared for a moment, unsure what to do.

 

“Sparhawk!” Vanion shouted, holding out a piece of long piece of cloth he’d apparently conjured out of thin air. “Look at their eyes! Cover their eyes!”

 

Moving quickly, Sparhawk did as his friend commanded. The wooden faces of the giants had been carefully painted to mimic human faces; through the paint, the eyes of both moving figures could be seen to be glowing faintly in the dull light. Sparhawk hastily tore a piece of material from his cloak and muttered a spell under his breath to make it large enough, then threw it over the head of the figure nearest him. Vanion had already done the same to the other figure, which had stopped moving.

 

Both men stood a moment in tense silence, all senses focussed on finding the smallest movement in the room. Eventually Sparhawk spoke. “You said Sephrenia was in town as well, didn’t you?”

 

“Yes, we’re staying at an inn just inside the gates.”

 

“Good, I’ll find Itagne and Danae tomorrow morning and we’ll come find you. We really need to speak to Sephrenia about this.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

“Before we go any further, I think we need to know a bit more of the background to this.” Vanion paced the floor as he spoke. “Itagne, do you know anything about the history of these carnival giants? Have there been rumours of this type of thing happening before?”

 

It was the next morning and the five of them were crowded into the small set of rooms Vanion and Sephrenia had found to stay in near the city gates. Being too noticeable to stay at the palace, they had travelled alone from Sarsos to Matherion and were careful to stay out of sight of anyone who might recognise them from their previous stay.

 

Itagne settled his hands in his lap and looked considering. “No, nothing like this has happened before, at least as far as anyone knows. People have never really taken the giants at all seriously, to be honest. Aside from a scholar or two at the university and a few old men and women scattered around who like to tell stories, people barely pay attention to them at all, except as part of the carnival parade.”

 

“Where did they come from? Does anyone know?”

 

Itagne laughed. “Some people will tell you they do but as I said, it’s mostly lost in folklore and academia. Take four academics with a similar specialist subject and you’ll end up with five opinions, as they say. Some people think they came from masques that people put on for entertainment at carnival time, each figure representing a different character. The size is thought to be a way of making sure that even people standing at the back could see the action. Others will tell you that it started as a competition between the towns; certainly each giant has a local history and a giant or a group of giants tends to belong to a particular place. Those people will tell you that the stories appeared after the giants did, as part of some sort of town one-upmanship, our giant is better than your giant and so on. There are a few tales of giants being created as part of competitions between musicians or great families. One particularly ugly lady giant was apparently created by a town whose duke had recently been turned down for marriage by a lady from the next town. The townsfolk, outraged at the perceived slight, responded by creating the ugliest giant they could and claiming it was the illegitimate daughter of the supposedly upstanding Lady Giant in the next town over.”

 

“As fascinating as this is,” Sparhawk cut in dryly. “It doesn’t tell us how these “giants” suddenly discovered magic or what it’s being used for.”

 

Sephrenia looked thoughtful. “I wouldn’t be so sure, dear one.” She tapped her fingers idly against Vanion’s leg. “You said that in the warehouse yesterday nothing attacked until Vanion came close to one particular priest and then two old fashioned gentlemen suddenly came face to face. Itagne, are there many rivalries in the stories that you know of these giants?”

 

“Certainly, my lady,” Itagne nodded. “There are a few self-contained stories that are very sweet but other than that there are a lot of political rivalries reflected in the old tales. There are people at the university who would know more, it’s not at all my area of expertise.”

 

“We should go there,“ Danae, who had been quiet up to that point, said suddenly.

 

“To the university?” Vanion said in surprise. “I’m not sure what good Sparhawk or I will be there, Danae.”

 

Danae smiled sweetly up at him, looking up through her eyelashes, and patted him gently on the cheek. (Danae had recently celebrated her thirteenth birthday and had decided to study the art of flirtation, much to Sparhawk’s consternation. This had lead to more than a few awkward moments in the palace and seemed unlikely, in Sparhawk’s rather jaded opinion, to improve any time soon. A particular servant boy had taken to following her around the palace with an adoring look on his face rather like that of a puppy following a bone, ignoring any other instructions given, which Princess Danae rather smugly announced was clear proof that she was a natural.)  

 

“But if you don’t come, you won’t get to hear the stories! And you wouldn’t want to miss out on story-time, would you Vanion?”

_____________________________________________________________________________________________ 

 

Despite the morning sun now breaking through the clouds and warming the spring air, the inside of the Department of Literary and Cultural Studies was cold, natural light filtering weakly through the one large window at the end of the hallway. 

 

When Princess Danae had expressed her fascination with the local tradition of carnival giants over lunch at the palace, the Emperor had made the suggestion in full view of his court that if she wished, she could visit the scholars at the university who had made it their business to collect all the old tales. The little princess had been delighted at the suggestion and had begged her father and Itagne (who happened to be visiting his brother) to accompany her. Excuses thus made, the three of them could make their way to the university. Vanion and Sephrenia, carefully disguised as minor members of the Tamul court in order to avoid detection, met them at the university gates.

 

Itagne lead them to a door at the end of the corridor and knocked. “We are expected,” he explained, “but this is technically an office, even if it’s being shared by five people at the moment.”

 

A woman opened the door, her short black hair just touching the collar of her academic robe. She looked puzzled for a moment, then her face cleared. “Ah, you must be our visitors from the palace! Please, come in!” Walking away from the door, she plucked her cloak from a hook on the door and smiled apologetically. “I’m just on my way out but Selgon will be able to happy to talk about his work with you, Princess.”

 

She and Itagne bowed to each other as she walked out the room before Itagne stepped forward with a smile.

 

“Selgon old boy, I’ve not seen you since we were undergrads together. How are you?”

 

The young man who turned around from his desk looked like he had not seen the sun in years. His heavy eyebrows and the downturned lines around his mouth gave him a discontented expression, which his attempt at a polite smile did little to dispel. “Busy, Itagne. You know how it is. Real academics always have work to do if we want to keep our funding. Are you back in the History department or have you officially decided to commit yourself full time to politics now?”

 

Itagne’s raised his eyebrows slightly. “I’m actually working as a lecturer in the Politics department at the moment. Obviously my practical experience is of great use in political studies.”

 

While they were talking, Sephrenia quietly beckoned Sparhawk to one side.

 

“There’s something in that cupboard,” she said quietly, pointing to a large wooden wardrobe in one corner of the room. “It’s not constant but every so often I can feel a pulse. Do you think we can persuade our friend to open it somehow?”

 

Sparhawk grunted. “We should have brought Ehlana with us, she could charm him into it easily. Can you and Danae do something? I don’t think he’s going to react well to one of us just asking him to open the cupboard.”

 

At that moment he heard his daughter say, “Oh, it’s all so interesting! You must tell these stories to people all the time, don’t you?”

 

Selgon shook his head. “Most people aren’t interested I'm afraid, Princess. Not everyone finds the stories as compelling as you and I do.”

 

“Surely you must repeat them to someone though,” she pressed, smiling winsomely up at him and gently touching his arm. “You’re such a good story-teller, you must practice somehow. I’m so bad at it! I daren't repeat stories to anyone but my cat. Mmrr is such a good listener.” The little princess looked away as though embarrassed at her confession.

 

“I’m sure you're not, Princess, but practice does make perfect as they say.” Selgon tried on his best reassuring smile, though his face was clearly so unused to the expression that it mostly looked like someone trying to re-shape a cool piece of wax.  

 

“Thank you for saying so,” Danae said doubtfully. “I’m sure you’ve never stooped to talking to a cat, though.”

 

Selgon looked hesitant for a moment, then appeared to make a decision. “Not a cat Princess, but I do spend a little time every day just talking through all the stories I've been working on each day, just to make sure that I have them committed to memory. Here,” he walked over to the cupboard and took out a small figure made of wood and wicker that looked very much like a miniature, antique version of some of the giants Sparhawk and Vanion had see the day before. “Every day I set aside a few minutes to sit with this on my desk and tell the stories to it.” His face hardened again for a second. “One day people will understand how important all this is and I want to be ready for when they need me.”

 

Sephrenia let out a small gasp at the sight of the figure and tightened her grip on Sparhawk’s arm. “That’s it,” she said, “That’s what was in the cupboard.”

 

Danae’s eyes had also widened. “Sparhawk, Vanion, come look at this! Isn’t it adorable?”

 

“May I?” Vanion asked as took the figure from Selgon’s hands and looked at it more closely. “It’s a fascinating object, no doubt. Do you know where it came from, Selgon?”

 

Selgon shook his head. “It’s just a replica of one of the local giants. I believe that particular character was created by one of the Tamul temples near here. It’s just a doll really, though it’s very well made considering its age.”

 

Danae frowned at him childishly. “Don’t be mean, you’ll hurt its feelings! I think it’s ever so sweet. Father, can’t I have him? It’s so adorable and I can tell all my stories to it- oh, I can learn the local legends too, can’t I Selgon? All the local legends and stories! It’ll be so much fun and it’ll keep me entertained while you and Mother are in meetings.”

 

Sparhawk, trying to keep up with his daughter's plans, shrugged ruefully at Selgon. “I’m so sorry, she seems quite taken with all of this. You know how it is with children her age. Danae, I’m sure we can get you something similar, we’ll talk to the local craftsman and-“

 

Danae stamped her foot. “No, but I want this one! Selgon, can’t I have it, please? I’ll look after it just as well as you did, I promise! And I’ll tell everyone all about your stories, all the girls at court will love them, I know.”

 

“Well, I suppose...” Selgon said hesitantly.

 

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Danae threw her arms around him and kissed him on both cheeks. The poor man didn’t seem to know where to look or put his hands. Sparhawk could sympathise; Danae could change minds and hearts with a touch or a kiss. Selgon would probably wonder later what had possessed him to give her the doll but it would be far too late by then. The little goddess was extremely adept at getting what she wanted.

 

A few minutes later, having made their excuses and said their goodbyes, the five of them found themselves back outside in the weak sunlight.

 

“Alright Danae, so what exactly are we carrying back to the palace with us?” Sparhawk asked.

 

“We’re not taking it back to the palace Sparhawk, don’t be silly. We’re taking it somewhere you can destroy it with your sword.”

 

“But why? What is it?”

 

Danae wrinkled her nose. “It belongs to the Tamul gods. I’ve told you before, they’re babies really. They love games and tricks. At one stage they decided they were getting all the boring parts of worship and their followers, who went to temple to listen to stories and then went home to play games, got all the good parts, so they decided they wanted to be more involved. Their answer to this was to persuade some of their priests to make figures like the one Vanion’s holding and feed them with their stories. The gods would hear them wherever they were and use them as the basis for their games.”

 

“So Selgon’s been telling his stories to the Tamul gods?”

 

“I thought I just said that,” Danae rolled her eyes at him. “He’s been telling stories and the gods have been playing games. If we destroy that, nobody can feed the Tamul gods with ideas and they'll lose interest. At that point the 'giants' will go back to being their usual inanimate selves and stop acting out their stories whenever they see something that looks like their traditional enemy. Luckily the Tamul gods haven’t got much of an attention span so the figures were never all that well made, we can destroy it with a sword made of iron or steel.” She smiled sweetly at them. “You’re welcome, by the way. You can thank me properly when we get back to the palace.”

 

 _____________________________________________________________________________________________

Epilogue

 

The morning of the carnival parade dawned bright and clear, the morning sun sparkling off the city’s buildings with a joyful sheen. Sparhawk and Ehlana stood on the balcony of their palace apartments, looking out onto the parade.

 

“Isn’t it lovely, Sparhawk?” Ehlana said dreamily. “The whole city turning out to see the parade?”

 

“It is,” he acknowledged warily. “You’re not planning on arranging something like this in Cimmura, are you? I don’t think the effect will be quite the same if we all have to stand out in the rain for hours.

 

Ehlana laughed. “I wasn’t thinking of it, no. It would be fun though wouldn’t it? Not something quite like this of course but all the crafts people could get involved in making the things for the parade and the children would love the characters.”

 

Sparhawk grunted noncommittally. 

 

“Isn’t it nice to watch though?" She said again. "All the colours and the people in the streets. I’m just feeling a little homesick this morning, knowing we’re going back on the road in a few days.” She paused and then looked around. With a change of tone she said, “We should go find the others. Danae’s missing the parade and I know she’ll want to see it. Come on,” she extended her hand to her husband. “Let’s go find everyone and find somewhere to watch the parade together. I’m sure we can arrange some alone time later for just you and me.” Smiling coquettishly at Sparhawk, she moved back indoors. With one last glance at the view from the balcony, Sparhawk followed her."

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to add a quick end note to say that I took some inspiration for this story from the real carnival giants that are a tradition in various parts of the world. I am mostly familiar with the ones in North-East France and Belgium, which have backstories and many belong to particular towns in much the same way as some of the "giants" in this story. In particular I have to mention that the story involving the ugly lady giant being created as the result of a perceived slight is based on the story of Binbin, who is the giant belonging to Valenciennes. Legend has it that Binbin is the illegitimate child of Monsieur Géant from the nearby town of Douhai. (Monsieur Géant has a wife, Madame Géant, and three children.) Binbin is supposed to be an ugly child and has a rhyme associated with him that, if I remember correctly, roughly translates to "Binbin who farts, Binbin who smells, if he doesn't stop, we'll have to put a trumpet in his bum." He was created as a deliberate insult to Douhai after Valenciennes sent a band/ orchestra of some sort (I've forgotten the exact details) to a music competition arranged by Douhai, which Douhai won. Valenciennes created Binbin in order to besmirch the good name of Monsieur Géant, who was apparently considered to be the father of all Douhai's inhabitants and therefore it was thought this would upset the good people (/rotten cheaters) of Douhai. As stated in the story however, the origins of the giants are uncertain so it's entirely possible that the local legend I found, is not entirely correct. ;)


End file.
